The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for gathering cut tobacco stalks and more particularly relates to a method for efficiently gathering cut burley tobacco stalks using far less effort and man hours than required by previous conventional methods.
Tobacco plants grow as relatively tall stalks with the tobacco leaves growing radially out from the stalks. In the case of air dried tobacco, particularly burley tobacco, the tobacco stalks are cut down either manually or with a mowing device and left in the field for a short period of time for field curing. Conventionally, wooden stakes would then be driven into the ground by workers at various positions in the tobacco field. The wooden stakes, however, have proven to be inefficient, cumbersome, and often destructive to the tobacco stalks. Also, use of wooden stakes is relatively labor intensive requiring generally more than one worker to place and hammer the stakes into the ground. The wooden stakes are not of sufficient weight or strength so that a worker could simply push the stake into the ground under his own weight. Conventionally, the worker would also need a mallet or other device to drive the stake into the ground. A conical tip or point would then be placed upon the stake after it has been driven into the ground whereby a worker could impale a tobacco stalk onto the stake by forcing the stalk down onto the conical tip. However, this method has also proven ineffective and often damaging to the tobacco stalk. The cross-sectional area of the wooden stakes is relatively large and, in many instances, the process of driving the stalk over the conical point and down onto the wooden stake would split the tobacco stalk. Once the tobacco stalk was split, there was a high probability that the stalk would not hang from the stake in the curing cells.
Another drawback of the conventional methods and apparatus is that once the tobacco was field cured, it was relatively difficult for a worker to withdraw the wooden stake from the ground since the stake was hammered into the ground previously. Often, excessive force would be needed to retrieve the wooden stakes with tobacco stalks threaded thereon from the ground.
The known methods have also proven labor intensive and wasteful in that, previously, workers expended much energy and time bending over to pick the tobacco stalks off the ground and then raising up to thread the tobacco stalks onto the wooden stakes. Thus, if a worker desired to spear six tobacco stalks onto a stake, he would have to repeat the bending and raising exercise at least six times per tobacco stake. Also, if the tobacco stake was not sufficiently driven into the ground, the wooden stakes tended to fall over under the weight of the tobacco stalks or due to adverse weather.
In my co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/842,231, I have described an alternative to the conventional methods of harvesting the cut tobacco stalks which employs an elevating scaffold trailer including a clamping device wherein the tobacco rods, which can be metal, are held substantially horizontal to the ground in the clamping device. In this manner, a worker could easily impale three tobacco stalks on each side of the clamp. After the tobacco rod was full, it is a relatively easy procedure for the worker to release the rod from the clamp and place the tobacco rod on the scaffold trailer.